Notebook : The Pac-9 Grid Conference Is History

After two seasons the Pac-9 “Superconference”--perhaps the toughest junior college football conference in the country--is broken up and little lamented by some of the battered football teams in the Southland.

El Camino College, now in the realigned South Coast Conference, will probably have a better record in the new league. But El Camino Coach John Featherstone said he’ll miss some aspects of the Pac-9 gathering, which included powerful Taft as well as most of the top programs in Southern California.

Featherstone said the Pac-9 conference, “for J. C. football, was an excellent idea. I have mixed feelings (about the breakup). It’s real tough physically on everybody’s football team. But the competition was excellent. It’s fun to go against other top coaching staffs in the area and match wits with those guys.”

The Warriors were 5-5 overall last year and 4-4 in the Pac-9.

They have opened the new season with losses to Glendale and Saddleback.

El Camino has announced that women’s volleyball Coach Charlene (Sharkey) Zartman has been named Metropolitan Conference women’s sports coach of the year for 1985-86. It is the second time Zartman has won the award.

Zartman, who is taking a leave from coaching this season while continuing to teach at El Camino, led the Warriors to a 38-1 record last season and a 12-0 Metro Conference mark. The only loss was in the state championship tournament.

Zartman, a former El Camino and UCLA star, returned to El Camino as an assistant coach in 1976 and was named head coach the next year. Since then she has won seven Metro Conference titles and two state championships.

She is teaching health and fitness classes at El Camino this season. Her assistant, Monica Krpan, is taking over the volleyball team.

Zartman also won the Metro women’s coach of the year award in 1984.

Around the horn: Former Loyola Marymount University basketball Coach Ed Goorjian, an assistant at Cal State Fullerton last season, has taken his show on the road. He’s coaching a pro team in Saudi Arabia. Ironically, the man Goorjian replaced at Loyola, Ron Jacobs, also ended up coaching overseas. He has had great success as the coach of the Philippine National Team. . . . The UC Santa Barbara football team, playing on the intercollegiate level for the first time since 1971, has two South Bay players on the roster: freshman linebacker Anthony Falangetti from San Pedro, and big (6-3, 260) junior lineman Eric Zwierlein from Mira Costa. . . . Pepperdine University is again favored to win the West Coast Athletic Conference women’s volleyball title. The Waves return conference MVP Julie Evans and first-team selection Lee Hoven out of Mira Costa High. Her sister Lisa is also on the team. . . . Another returning all-WCAC choice is Loyola Marymount junior Cathy Petrissans. . . . Cal State Northridge linebacker Reggie Wauls, a senior out of St. Bernard High, is the team’s leader on defense. He led the Matadors in tackles as a junior. . . . John Slusher, an all-CIF Small Schools running back and linebacker last year at Chadwick, is playing freshman ball at Dartmouth. Freshmen aren’t allowed to play varsity in the Ivy League. . . . Claudia Hemmersbach, a junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is a starting setter on the volleyball team. The Redondo Beach native played at Bishop Montgomery High. . . . Cal State Bakersfield appears to have a soccer pipeline to the South Bay, specifically two schools. This year’s roster includes Jim Bennett, Dan Getty and Jeff Svoboda from Rolling Hills High and Keith Dick, John Hastriter and Robert Sibbald from Redondo.